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08-Validate-Your-Own-Crew.md

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Validating Your Configurations

This guide explains how to use Techies' validation features to ensure your crews, tasks, and agents are correctly configured.

Overview

Validation helps you catch errors early by checking:

  • Configuration schema adherence
  • Existence of referenced components
  • Cyclical dependencies
  • Task execution order
  • Tool and callback availability

Using the check Command

The techies check command provides a simple way to validate different components:

# Validate a crew
techies check crew my_crew

# Validate a specific task
techies check task my_task

# Validate an agent
techies check agent my_agent

# Validate a tool
techies check tool read_file

# Validate a callback
techies check callback json_formatter

Each command performs comprehensive validation of the referenced component and its dependencies.

Recursive vs. Non-Recursive Validation

By default, validation is recursive, meaning it checks not only the target component but also all its dependencies:

  • For crews: validates all agents and tasks
  • For tasks: validates the agent, callback, and dependent tasks
  • For agents: validates all tools they use

You can disable recursive validation with the --no-recursive flag (or -r shorthand):

techies check crew my_crew --no-recursive
techies check task some_task -r

This is useful when you want to validate only a specific component without checking its dependencies.

What Gets Validated

Crews

  • Schema validation: Checks if the crew configuration has all required fields and correct data types
  • Agent validation: Verifies all referenced agents exist and are valid
  • Task validation: Ensures all tasks exist and are properly configured
  • Topological order: Confirms tasks are listed in a valid execution order based on dependencies

Tasks

  • Schema validation: Checks the task configuration against the required schema
  • Agent validation: Ensures the assigned agent exists and is valid
  • Callback validation: If a callback is specified, verifies it exists
  • Dependency validation: Checks that all dependent tasks exist and there are no circular dependencies

Agents

  • Schema validation: Verifies the agent configuration meets the required schema
  • Tool validation: Ensures all tools referenced by the agent exist

Tools and Callbacks

  • Existence check: Verifies that the tool or callback is registered in the system

Validation Messages

The validation output tells you exactly what went wrong:

Checked crew 'my_crew' (recursive=True): FAILED - Crew 'my_crew' has invalid tasks:
Task 'generate_code': Task 'generate_code' references invalid agent: Agent 'nonexistent_agent' not found

Successful validation produces:

Checked agent 'ui_designer' (recursive=True): OK

Programmatic Validation

You can also use the validation functions in your own code:

from techies.crew import Crew
from techies.task import Task
from techies.agent import Agent

# Validate a crew
ok, reason = Crew.validate("my_crew", recursive=True)
if not ok:
    print(f"Crew validation failed: {reason}")

# Validate a task
ok, reason = Task.validate("my_task")
if not ok:
    print(f"Task validation failed: {reason}")

# Validate an agent
ok, reason = Agent.validate("my_agent")
if not ok:
    print(f"Agent validation failed: {reason}")

Best Practices

  • Validate early and often during development to catch configuration errors
  • Start with specific components before validating entire crews
  • Always check for cycles in task dependencies using recursive validation
  • Use validation when modifying existing crews to ensure backward compatibility
  • After validation errors, fix issues incrementally and revalidate

Dependencies and Schema

Techies validates configurations against JSON schemas that enforce:

  • Crew schema: Requires agents and tasks lists
  • Task schema: Requires agent and description fields
  • Agent schema: Requires goal, backstory, and tools fields

The validation also checks for proper task dependency ordering to prevent runtime errors due to missing context data.

Summary

  • The techies check command helps validate your configurations
  • Validation is recursive by default, checking all dependencies
  • Schema validation catches missing or incorrectly typed fields
  • Dependency validation ensures proper execution order
  • Clear error messages help you identify and fix issues quickly

Next Steps

Ready to explore more Techies features?

➡️ Create Your Own Crew ➡️ Create Your Own Tool ➡️ Using Callbacks in Tasks